"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

I love thinking about extremes, and taking a thought to the polar side, one way or the other, and yea, if you remove all sensory input and just wonder what existence is, living in a white room with walls, two kinds of people will explain it and neither are correct. On the other side, both would be living it up in a strip club, living a hedonistic lifestyle, with neon lights everywhere, overwhelmed by the senses, and still pose the same questions. I want to see that video.

I don't have much to say about it now, but have been thinking this way my whole life anyway. It spurred a lot of thought in me, thanks. I'm not ready to write my book yet. It's still in my head for now.

(I said I wasn't going to write more, but had to come back)I could write more about my thoughts on death but- (time stopped! Sorry, but there is no conclusion. We can only daydream about what it's like when alive)

That is my view on death. Although there are reports of people leaving their body, that's only near death, not stories from people who died instantly. Who knows what the meaning of life is. Perhaps we are just here to eat, sleep and fuck, and it's the only truth which most people don't want to accept.

How does this relate to free will? (oops, I thought this was the other thread, but it still relates) Those are our primal urges, even Einstein would admit we all have. The Shocking Truth is so simple. I never read the original post and have been on a tangent this whole time. I like getting deep sometimes and thinking about life and death and existence. There's no post I can make to sum it all up anyway. Thanks again for the video and stirring up thought in me.

The Shocking Truth is simple and, according to the OP, we are still on topic. I should point out that the white guy in the video is closer to the truth, but, righteously, he makes it clear that he's only hypothesising. He's not speaking dogmatically or in absolutes like the black guy.

To anyone who thinks I'm racist: I'm not.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

You aren't racist; the video was. It's also missing the token Asian and Latino guy, and is misogynist for not having a female character. The Asian guy would use math to explain it using equations, the Latino would be too lazy to care, the woman would be too overwhelmed with emotion to think rationally, and the white guy would gentrify the place with a Whole Foods.

I'm not racist either, and just poking fun at stereotypes and the PC culture we have today. Perhaps I have seen too much South Park. Black lives Darkmatter!

While you've been watching 'South Park', I've been looking into pre-Socratic philosophers such as Parmenides, Empedocles and Anaxagoras. The latter made me think deeply about the nature of nothing.

Nothing is what isn't. In fact, to say 'nothing is' is to commit a semantic oxymoron. Nothing isn't. Nothing never was. Nothing in existence is inconceivable because it's no thing and equates with nonexistence. Nothing is present right now by not being---conveyed by the contrasting fact that something is.

In quantum theory, a state of nothingness is so unstable that the possibility for something to emerge is a probabilistic inevitability. This physical nothingness isn't what we humans imagine nothing to be---which is an impossible nothingness. The one from which all things truly come resides in ultimate reality.

The Source is so simple that it is best described as est in potentia ad aliquid. It's the potential to become something---not nothing because nothing can never be; nothing isn't anything. The physical nothingness that really exists is a cosmic blueprint that naturally runs away from simplicity and spreads in all directions like water spilt on the floor ...

Have you heard of Anaxagoras?

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

Anaxagoras was an early example of contrarianism that provoked pre-Socratic zeitgeist indignation and social ostracism. Anaximenes, his predecessor, had already opined equally incredible heterodoxy---a quasi-scientific explanation of the world which was dangerous under Persian rule but may have partly influenced his pen-friend Pythagoras.

Like an early scientist, Anaxagoras was thirsty for knowledge, an urge which, unlike Arthur Schopenhauer's 'pessimism', made him assert that living is better than being dead or nonexistent because it gives one the opportunity to study the universe. (He correctly explained eclipses, rainbows, meteors and described the sun as a large fiery mass whose light is reflected by the moon.) I would contend, however, that Schopenhauer had a point about the rock being free from the displeasures that come with conscious experience. The rock, being a lifeless inanimate object, is not concerned with the study of the universe because it does not experience the existential curiosity that impels human beings in the pursuit of knowledge.

Anaxagoras bore the burden of being the first skilled thinker to bring philosophy to Athens. He introduced his theory of matter which appears to be partly vindicated by quantum theory. For instance, he said that all things existed 'fragmented' and in a 'confused and indistinguishable form'; such descriptions bring to mind quantum fluctuations and that, at bottom, the homogeneity of subatomic energy is displayed. Gore Vidal so admired Anaxagoras that he had one of his characters---Cyrus Spitama---mention him in CREATION.

Admirably, like many enlightened freethinkers, Anaxagoras had no interest in wealth nor his aristocratic background; picking his philosophy over his inheritance. The philosopher had no time for the nationalistic pride that was so prevalent in Greece and declared himself to be a 'citizen of the universe'.

Anaxagoras also had enough mental acuity to spot shortcomings and contradictions in the philosophical propositions of others. When Empedocles thought that he was abiding by Parmenides' law against BECOMING by stating that bone is made of the 'roots' fire, water and earth, Anaxagoras correctly pointed out the violation: In claiming that bone comes into existence when those element interact with one another, Empedocles asserts that bone emerges from what it is NOT; bone is not fire, water nor earth, ergo, it cannot emerge from them.

In order to overcome the problem without violating Parmenides' doctrine, Anaxagoras posited that 'everything is in everything'. The essence of, say, bone, flesh and blood---and everything else!---preexist in something like an apple before this one is ingested by people. And when his contemporaries couldn't reconcile this explanation with the fact that there are different things in the world, the philosopher invoked his PRINCIPLE OF PREDOMINANCE: 'Nothing is like anything else, but those things are and were most plainly each thing, of which there are most in it.'

In other words, each thing obtains its unique characteristics from the substance which exists in it in the highest concentration. Anaxagoras was close to the truth: wood and metal are indistinguishable at the subatomic level and their molecular structure makes all the difference. Molecular preponderance is the key.

But what Anaxagoras is mostly remembered for is his eutaxiological view of reality. For starters, he was the first to introduce the distinction between mind and matter, then he incorporated two ostensibly opposing outlooks: the TELEOLOGICAL and the MECHANISTIC. This move defied the Hylozoists before him as it denied that matter was alive and intelligent; his eutaxiology postulated mind as a teleological principle that set matter into motion. What followed was a mechanistic process. This outlook closely resembles deism---where an intelligent designer creates the cosmos and leaves it to naturally unfold.

But NOUS (mind) as the governor of movement in the material universe also served as a 'God of the gaps' for this scientifically-minded philosopher whenever he couldn't explain other properties of the world. Well, if it was venial for Isaac Newton to do so when he couldn't account for planetary motion, so it should also be for a man who preceded the 17th century physicist by millenia.

For Anaxagoras, the universe would be inert and devoid of life without MIND. Mind was the Prime Mover and the creator of the cosmos:

'It is the finest and purest of all things, and has judgement of everything and greatest power; and everything that has life, both greater and smaller, all these Mind controls.'

Neuroscience may be doomed to struggle for conclusions when we are finally forced to forsake the infomation-processing analogy for the brain (it's not a computer) and realise that the multifaceted neural structures in our bonces have had unique lifetimes of development and worldly exposure---making our neural foibles next to impossible to decipher. As psychologist Robert Epstein put it regarding the information-processing assumption:

'The faulty logic of the IP metaphor is easy enough to state. It is based on a faulty syllogism – one with two reasonable premises and a faulty conclusion. Reasonable premise #1: all computers are capable of behaving intelligently. Reasonable premise #2: all computers are information processors. Faulty conclusion: all entities that are capable of behaving intelligently are information processors.'

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

Maybe Epstein is using too many metaphors that his argument ends up being divorced from the truth. I just have to share this by David Krakauer because it's too beautiful not to:

'The abacus is a device for doing arithmetic in the world with our hands and eyes. But expert abacus users no longer have to use the physical abacus. They actually create a virtual abacus in the visual cortex. And that’s particularly interesting, because a novice abacus user like me or you thinks about them either verbally or in terms of our frontal cortex. But as you get better and better, the place in the brain where the abacus is represented shifts, from language-like areas to visual, spatial areas in the brain. It really is a beautiful example of an object in the world restructuring the brain to perform a task efficiently—in other words, by my definition, intelligently.'

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

But I would contend that, before the foundation of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama was reasonably agnostic about the world and made some sound observations regarding the human mind. He saw that meditation made the human condition easier, more bearable; and he was right in saying that desire is the source of suffering. The prince urged us to attempt an alteration of our mental default mode.

Some people saw potential in this route. For others, it meant to stop being human. As the Buddha said, one doesn't have to follow him---if his prescription works for you, fine; if it seems incompatible with your nature, drop it.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."